Day Six: 21 km

As I wrote the other day, I was really dreading today's run. After yesterday's fast 10 km my body had been aching all day so I was pretty sure this run was gonna hurt.
For the first 5 km it did hurt, but from then on everything seemed to get better and better. I ran from my place to the Albert-channel and ran on it's right bank from Hasselt to Genk. In Genk I crossed the bridge over the channel so I could run back to Hasselt on the left bank. While I was on the bridge (12 km into my run) I sent a text message to my friend Simon (I always run using the Nike+ app on my iPhone) because he lives two minutes from there and we drove over this bridge the day before and talked about running over it. He just texted me back "don't jump, life will get better".
Anyway, as soon as I hit the left bank of the channel, the hard wind hit my face and slowed me down A LOT. Next to the channel it's always windy but today the wind was particulary heavy and the thought of running 8 more kilometres didn't do much good for my morale.
Around kilometre 15 a car drove by that I recognised as Simon's car: he parked 20 metres ahead of me, jumped out in his running gear, ran past me and yelled I had to run behind him so I could stay out of the wind for a few kilometres. I had no idea how much of difference this would make, but with Simon's help I managed to work my pace up from 5:10 min/km to 4:30. Simon ran with me for about four kilometres, at which point he turned around and ran back to his car, leaving me with a renewed spirit and only a couple of kilometres to go. This really helped me to uplift my spirit and I managed to more or less stick around the pace o 4:30 min/km for the remaining kilometres, clocking in at a total time of 1 hour and 47 minutes, and an average pace of 5 min/km.
When I got home I drank a recovery shake, ate some cornflakes and sat in an icebath for 20 minutes. It may be psychological but taking an icebath after a long distance run in the morning seems to take away the pains and tired feeling that I usually have in my legs for the rest of the day.

Distance: 21 kilometres.
Duration: 1 hour 47 minutes and 14 seconds.
Pace: 5:06 per kilometre.
Date: Sunday 17/07/11 at 08:04am